Explaining Policy Change in the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood

<p>This edited volume discusses and challenges the conventional wisdoms dominating the scholarship on policy change in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood countries. Drawing upon new empirical evidence underpinning the contributions to this volume the authors argue that compliance with or convergence to EU policies continue despite high costs limited capacities and the lack of EU membership prospects. The contributions also challenge country-level or policy-type explanations that emphasise membership aspirations asymmetric interdependencies between the EU and the neighbourhood countries or the level of politicisation or institutionalisation characterising particular policy fields. Finally the volume's findings point towards important differences between membership accession and neighbourhood Europeanisation by highlighting factors that have been ignored by students of EU enlargement. These factors include the role of Russia which is an important regional power and of transnational actors such as multinational companies or international finance institutions as well as the impact of informal domestic veto players on policy change in the EU's Eastern neighbourhood.</p><p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Europe-Asia Studies</i>.</p>